Comrade Vladimir is getting some flowers for Nadezhda, his Valentine. Being of a precise analytical mind, he plans to spend exactly 100 rubles on exactly 100 flowers. At the flower market, they sell daisies at a rate of 5 for 3 rubles, tulips at a rate of 7 for 5 rubles, carnations at a rate of 9 for 7 rubles, and roses at a rate of 3 for 9 rubles.
To qualify for these special rates, one needs to buy daisies in bunches of 5, tulips in bunches of 7, etc. In how many different ways can Vladimir select a bunch of 100 flowers that will contain some flowers of all four kinds while still qualifying for these special rates?
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Nice. That does simplify the process considerably. :)
Let d , t , c , r be the respective number of bunches of daisies, tulips, carnations and roses.
The "quantity equation" is then 5 d + 7 t + 9 c + 3 r = 1 0 0 , and the "price equation" is 3 d + 5 t + 7 c + 9 r = 1 0 0 .
Subtracting the former from the latter yields the equation
− 2 d − 2 t − 2 c + 6 r = 0 ⟹ 3 r = d + t + c .
Substituting this result back into the quantity equation yields
6 d + 8 t + 1 0 c = 1 0 0 ⟹ 3 d + 4 t + 5 c = 5 0 ,
where d , t , c must be positive integers and their sum must be divisible by 3 in order for r to be a positive integer as well. So now the tedious part, working our way down from c = 8 , (clearly c = 1 0 , 9 will not yield solutions), to c = 1 , checking for suitable values for d , t and then the divisibility condition. This leads to the solution quadruples, where r = 3 d + t + c ,
( d , t , c , r ) = ( 4 , 2 , 6 , 4 ) , ( 3 , 4 , 5 , 4 ) , ( 2 , 6 , 4 , 4 ) , ( 1 , 8 , 3 , 4 ) , ( 1 2 , 1 , 2 , 5 ) and ( 1 1 , 3 , 1 , 5 ) ,
i.e., a total of 6 different ways.
@Otto Bretscher I suppose that you were more interested in creative ways to make the final filtering process less tedious. In this case the brute force approach only took a few minutes, but I'm curious what a more streamlined approach might look like.
Yes, a nice complete solution... I'm sorry that you had to work your way through the "tedious part". Thanks! (+1) I usually do these problems with Gaussian elimination... I will post a solution when I find the time. It gets a bit less tedious that way since we can reduce the problem to two ("free") variables.
I always like to point out a typo just to show that I have read the solution carefully: In the fifth row you should have 6 r in the first equation.
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As Brian explains, we have the two equations (for quantity and price)
5 d + 7 t + 9 c + 3 r = 1 0 0
3 d + 5 t + 7 c + 9 r = 1 0 0
The reduced row-echelon form of this system comes out to be
d = c + 1 2 r − 5 0 and t = 5 0 − 2 c − 9 r
To end up with a some daisies and tulips in the bunch, we need c + 1 2 r > 5 0 and 2 c + 9 r < 5 0
The "final filtering" isn't so tedious now, since we deal with only two variables and there are no additional divisibility conditions to satisfy.
The second inequality gives r ≤ 5 .
If r = 5 then 2 c < 5 0 − 4 5 so c ≤ 2 , which gives two solutions.
If r = 4 then 2 < c < 7 , which gives four solutions.
If r ≤ 3 , then there are no solutions.
Thus we have 6 solutions overall.